mend is a place

Hunched over a loom building words a letter at a time—

—is a pretty funny way to write.¹

In some respects, it is crazy slow.

In others — well a single word can conjure so much—

twig; hand woven tapestry; hand spun silk warp; wool and linen weft; indigo 3” x 5” 2024

—that gal might, for instance, spend an entire day contemplating a twig (ask me how I know).

She might spend a week contemplating the idea of land.

land; hand woven tapestry; hand spun wool warp; hand spun wool and paper weft (sewing pattern tissue); walnut; 3” x 5” 2024

For land could be anything from the piece of ground at the roots of the very tree you are sniffing—

—to the expanse you can see from a windy knoll.

It could summon home lands or elf lands or an entire imaginary continent.

twig land; hand woven tapestries; hand spun wool, silk, paper, linen; 2004

It might even conjure a dream.

Words are a bit nuts if you think about them too hard—and combining them! Well that is overwhelming and irresistible at once.

Indeed as Antonia Malchick² so aptly says: writing is very, very weird.

It feels like doing something—

—it is doing something—

—and yet drawing a comic about mending—

—and spending the day weaving the word while mulling over the idea that mend is a place³ —

visible mend; hand woven tapestry; hand spun wool warp; hand spun wool and linen weft; indigo; 3” x 5” 2024

—does not get that buttonhole fixed so I can fasten my pants.

But so what? There are other well-patched trousers at the ready, other ways to be in a mend—

mend land; hand woven tapestry; a place where 1. almost everything gets mended 2. almost everything is mendable including the land itself and 3. the land helps mend the creatures within and upon it; as big as the earth.

—other ways, indeed make amends—⁴

—not least to dear Beryl for making her ride in that stress-inducing vehicle.⁵

And perhaps also to myself for wanting so much to see where the next word will take me—⁶

—that if not for Beryl, I would forget to be still

Remember to comment with the button above rather than by hitting reply, for if you choose the latter I won’t see your lovely words.

And if you know anyone who might enjoy these meanderings—or likes to make things out of felt— please do click the button below and see what they think.

1. Fringeless tapestry weavers —did you note the VERY fuzzy and rather thick wool warp in the second image? The fuzziness of the wool is actually quite lovely as the weft stays nicely in place, but this is thicker yarn than I would use under most circumstances, and as you might note there is not a lot of space between the doubled warps. I chose it deliberately though, because I’m using a fine singles linen weft and after weaving twig with the same weft and a thin silk warp, I thought this might be easier. If you scroll through the images you might notice the difference in finished texture between the two words: the warp “rib” more pronounced in mend than in twig…

OH, and while I’m in the midst of a weaving footnote, someone asked recently if I sew the slits around the letters and the answer is that I don’t, at least not at this scale (8 epi, 5 warps per letter). If the letters were twice the size? Maybe.

2. Antonia Malchik, This Counts from her Substack On the Commons. Here are two more paragraphs from her essay:

“Writing is weird but it’s also necessary and it exists far beyond any arbitrary measures of success and failure. I’ve written before of my stepmother’s great-aunt, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, and her life that knew little but hardship and brutal loss, and how throughout it she wrote poetry so meaningful and beloved that to this day there are museums dedicated to her all across the country.

At the end of my life, all I can ask for is that I’ve done the best work possible and used whatever skills and talents I’m fortunate enough to have to create something of beauty and meaning. Maybe one book, one essay, one single line, might reach the one person who really needs it.”

3. 1. a place that has been mended. From the (somewhat tattered) World Encyclopedia Dictionary volume L-Z that my dear late husband Dan once pulled from the book discard/save bin at our local recycling center.

4. mend (v.) c. 1200, "to repair" (clothes, a tool, a building), "remove defects" (from something broken, defaced, deranged, or worn), from a shortened form of Old French amender "correct, set right, make better, improve" (see amend). Meaning "to put right, atone for (faults and errors), amend (one's life), repent" is from c. 1300. Intransitive sense of "to grow better, improve" is from late 14c. Related: Mended; mending. also from c. 1200

mend (n.) early 14c., "recompense, reparation," a shortened form of amends. Sense of "a remedy, cure" (now obsolete) is from mid-14c., from mend (v.). Meaning "act of mending; a repaired hole or rip in fabric" is from 1888. Phrase on the mend "on the path to recovering from sickness, improving in condition" is attested by 1802. also from early 14c.

5. I’ve no idea why Beryl finds the old truck so very disconcerting. She’s thrilled to go places in the car but there is something about the pickup…Still, it is the best way to get the blown down branches to the yard waste recycling center. And she does not want to be left at home.

6. Along with Imbolc and St. Brigid’s Day, February 1 is Hourly Comics Day—a day in which anyone around the world who wants to draws a comic or cartoon for every hour they are awake. Or tries anyway. (You might have noted that a few of the comics I in this post have times at the top rather than just dates). The trick is to actually let other things happen during the day and not end up drawing so much that all you have to draw about is drawing. This actually tricky to do unless you’re a really fast cartoonist, or pretty casual, like me. One way or another I find it fascinating to notice and mark how much time I can spend in various activities—at the computer for instance, or my loom. Looking back at last week’s I see that I didn’t draw a single comic of me playing the concertina— and I’d like to make amends to myself (and my instrument), for that.

And for no reason other than that this is the last footnote, I want to say that last week my dear father mentioned that he’s thought about reading my footnotes first— so if you’re doing that today Daddy, I hope they were compelling!